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at last, away up at the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two
serenos, on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noiselessly
towards him. On one side of the road a long frame building--the
store--would be closed and barricaded from end to end; facing it
another white frame house, still longer, and with a verandah--the
hospital--would have lights in the two windows of Dr. Monygham's
quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a clump of pepper trees did not
stir, so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the radiation of the
over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand still for a moment with the two
motionless serenos before him, and, abruptly, high up on the sheer face
of the mountain, dotted with single torches, like drops of fire fallen
from the two great blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots
would begin to rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering
speed and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge, and sent
upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero in Rincon swore that
on calm nights, by listening intently, he could catch the sound in his
doorway as of a storm in the mountains.

To Charles Gould's fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the
uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night towards the mine, it
would meet him at the edge of a little wood just beyond Rincon. There
was no mistaking the growling mutter of the mountain pouring its stream
of treasure under the stamps; and it came to his heart with the
peculiar force of a proclamation thundered forth over the land and the
marvellousness of an accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire.
He had heard this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening
when his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through a strip of
forest, had reined in their horses near the stream, and had gazed for
the first time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The head of
a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round the corner of the
San Tome mountain (which is square like a blockhouse) the thread of a
slender waterfall flashed bright and glassy through the dark green of
the heavy fronds of tree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and,
stretching his arm up the gorge, had declared with mock solemnity,
"Behold the very paradise of snakes, senora."

And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep that
night at Rincon. The alcalde--an old, skinny Moreno, a sergeant of
Guzman Bento's time--had cleared respectfully out of his house with his
three pretty daughters, to make room for the foreign senora and their
worships the Caballeros. All he asked Charles Gould (whom he took for a
mysterious and official person) to do for him was to remind the supreme
Government--El Gobierno supreme--of a pension (amounting to about a
dollar a month) to which he believed himself entitled. It had been
promised to him, he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially,
"many years ago, for my valour in the wars with the wild Indios when a

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